Annabelle (2014)
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Critics Consensus: Annabelle borrows unabashedly from better horror films, content to leave viewers with a string of cheap jolts that fail to build on the far more effective The Conjuring.
Critics Consensus: Annabelle borrows unabashedly from better horror films, content to leave viewers with a string of cheap jolts that fail to build on the far more effective The Conjuring.
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Movie Info
Before The Conjuring, there was ANNABELLE. (C) Warner Bros.- Rating:
- R (for intense sequences of disturbing violence and terror)
- Genre:
- Horror
- Directed By:
- John R. Leonetti
- Written By:
- Gary Dauberman
- In Theaters:
- Oct 3, 2014 Wide
- US Box Office:
- $79.5M
Cast
-
Annabelle Wallis
as Mia -
Ward Horton
as John -
Alfre Woodard
as Evelyn -
Tony Amendola
as Father Perez -
Eric Ladin
as Detective Clarkin -
Brian Howe
as Pete Higgins
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Critic Reviews for Annabelle
All Critics (107) | Top Critics (25) | Fresh (33) | Rotten (74)
Quality is often irrelevant in a horror movie; shock is the key.
The script, by Gary Dauberman, is a clichéd mess, lacking humor and surprises. But Leonetti stages some fright-worthy sequences ...
What about this movie is supposed to scare us?
What we mostly get in Annabelle is what we've gotten from so many other horror films: creaking floors, funky white-robed figures, home appliances that go off on their own, mysterious writing that shows up in mysterious places.
Annabelle, an effective prequel to horror pastiche The Conjuring, surpasses its predecessor simply by virtue of occasionally being scary.
Although [Leonetti] covers no new ground - things are largely predictable - he pays tribute to horror classics such as "Rosemary's Baby."
Useless, completely useless: clumsily made and criminally underwritten.
All in all, Annabelle is well-made and contains a few moments that might look great out of context, but its story is too thin to recommend this to anyone but hardcore fans of The Conjuring.
It's a few good shock effects and a lot of ho-hum.
Like the titular doll, this thing's off the shelf.
The demonic doll from The Conjuring gets her own unsubtle, repetitive horror flick.
Cynical, forgettable and vastly inferior to Curse Of Chucky.
The scares are orchestrated with more flair than usual, even if the best of them are all spoiled in the trailer.
The toy in this prequel to agreeable period horror The Conjuring could hardly seem more sinister if it had presented Top of the Pops during the 1970s
With Alfre Woodard as yet another of those hardworking and self-sacrificing movie black women who takes one for the team, 'the team' being affluent, elegant white folks.
Leonetti's The Conjuring spinoff is arguably the best demon doll prequel ever made. It is also good.
Annabelle works reasonably well in the first half, building up a nice sense of impending dread. It borrows heavily from Rosemary's Baby before turning to a by-the-numbers litany of standard shock tactics.
The set-pieces are effectively handled, with a few goose-bump moments along the way, but the story makes no sense whatsoever.
This film is very much stock schlock.
Why would you want a doll looking as ugly as that in your collection in the first place?
The Polanski rips begin with the obvious (having a couple named Mia and John, as in Farrow and Cassavetes, is about as blatant as you can get) and continue throughout, to an annoying degree.
Well acted, slickly produced and will make you jump - such a shame it somehow adds up to less than the sum of its parts.
That creepy grinning doll from The Conjuring gets its own origin story in this disappointingly banal supernatural spin-off.
Audience Reviews for Annabelle
Before The Conjuring, there was Annabelle! Ooooo well i think i speak for us all when i say i wish there wasn't. I'd rather watch The grizzly tales for gruesome kids on CITV.
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Super Reviewer
Because it follows to the letter the conventions of the genre, this is an efficient yet passable horror movie that doesn't come close to being as scary as The Conjuring but offers some good moments here and there (the scene of the elevator is particularly awesome).
MoreSuper Reviewer
Fourteen months to conceive, write, develop, shoot, edit, and release a film is not a lot of time and Annabelle is proof of that. It's a rushed, underdeveloped, and completely ineffective attempt to cash in on a new prospect. It takes one aspect from The Conjuring that was effectively creepy for the ten minutes it appeared and tries to develop it into an entire feature to which it fails epically. And there's a lot more wrong than that. The acting feels is low quality porn caliber. The scares are pretty much lame jump scares that are predictable as all hell. The story makes no sense and the dialogue is horrendous. This is an actual line from a cop trying to console Mia when she tells him she's seeing strange things: "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." What the hell does that mean? Believe me when I say I don't even think Daniel Day Lewis could have made the film's lines believable. And just in case you don't believe me, the director is John R. Leonetti who also made Mortal Kombat: Annihilation and The Butterfly Effect 2. Annabelle is equally as atrocious.
MoreSuper Reviewer
Much like the countless throw away, straight to DVD Disney animated sequels to come out of late the 90's and early 2000's (Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World, The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea, Cinderella 2: Dreams Come True") "Annabelle" (a prequel) is nothing more than a soulless money-grab from this particular production company, attempting to feed off the success of "The Conjuring". No mention of Ed and Lorraine Warren (real life paranormal investigators from "The Conjuring") no James Wan (the director of "The Conjuring") and not one doll-induced scare, all seemed to have a hand in making "Annabelle" a strikingly forgettable film. I mean, in "The Conjuring", the Annabelle doll is only used in all of three scenes, but due to some smart direction, those are some of the scariest potions of the movie. In "Annabelle", the titular doll is used throughout and it's not even a little bit creepy. What gives?
Read the rest of my review at: http://www.examiner.com/review/annabelle-she-s-like-chucky-only-boring-as-hell
Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus
Super Reviewer
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